Aisquith glanced at his watch. 'I have just enough time to pack a bag and catch a southbound train.' Turning towards Kate, he cupped her face between his hands and quickly kissed her on the lips.

'Goodbye, Caedmon and ... please be careful,' Kate whispered, clearly upset by the other man's imminent departure.

About to take another swig of his beer, Finn glanced at Aisquith. 'Needle. Haystack,' he said, summing up the crazy-a.s.s, half-baked quest. 'That said, good luck, Sir Prancelot. And may the Force be with you.'

Aisquith's mouth contorted into a snide smile. 'You do realize, don't you, that if I find the Grail, your little gold trinket will be utterly worthless?'

45.

Ivo Uhlemann raised the china cup to his lips and took a sip of green tea.

Without the tracking device, finding Finnegan McGuire in a city of two million inhabitants would be next to impossible. Particularly since they only had three days until the heliacal rising of Sirius. Although they had managed to track down McGuire's cohort, Caedmon Aisquith, the owner of L'Equinoxe bookstore.

The day's events having taken their toll, he'd sought his favourite sanctuary, the secluded alcove that overlooked the Seven's research facility. Constructed underground, the installation was designed around a three-storey faux atrium. Multiple laboratories, work stations, a well-stocked library and several conference rooms lined the top two storeys. With its full-spectrum illumination, banks of frosted gla.s.s and lush plants, it was a visually appealing environment.

Cathedral-like, it was here that Ivo prayed daily to the G.o.ds of Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and Planck.

Peering over the railing, he was pleased to observe the researchers, scientists and scholars seated at various tables on the mezzanine level. In order to maintain secrecy, they endeavoured under the false belief that they were working on a covert government project. To further the deceit, they'd been forced to sign an 'official' confidentiality disclosure agreement. Should they reveal the nature of their work to anyone outside of the foundation, they would be hit with heavy monetary fines and possible imprisonment. Or so they believed. If, in fact, any of the researchers ever did violate the terms of the agreement, a far more severe penalty would be meted out. Administered by the Dark Angel.

The sight of so much industry, of virtuosi working for a common cause, was a soothing balm for Ivo's frazzled nerves. An organized collective, all of the researchers at the Seven Research Foundation were in pursuit of the same primary objective to a.n.a.lyze the effect of fusing astral and telluric energies to create the Vril force.

The Lost Science of the ancient world.

While they'd had great success engineering a special generator to create the Vril force, they were missing the unique integral component that would operate the device the Lapis Exillis.

Once they found the Lapis Exillis, and they would find it, das Gro Versuch, the Great Experiment, could be conducted. In Stage One of the experiment, they would generate the Vril force. In the next stage, the Vril force would be used to do the unimaginable ... to create a loop in the s.p.a.cetime continuum.

The ultimate physics experiment.

Glancing dismissively at his tepid cup of tea, Ivo hoped that he lived long enough to witness that history-altering event.

The pain having become more than he could bear, he gracelessly lumbered to his feet. The metastasized tumour in the back of his abdominal cavity pressed against his spine, creating near-constant pain. According to his oncologist, he had no more than four months to live. Even if he underwent the gruelling treatments, it would only add an extra two or three months to his life. Preferring pain to debilitating nausea and uncontrollable diarrhoea, he'd elected not to undergo the chemotherapy and radiation treatment. At least the pain could be managed.

Slowly shuffling to a locked door on the other side of the alcove, Ivo keyed a numeric code into the security pad, the door unlocking with a soft pong!

A private lavatory, it was painted and tiled in neutral shades of brown, the cabinetry stained a dark espresso. An elaborate dried floral arrangement, an upholstered high-backed chair and several pillar candles created a tasteful decor.

Ivo stepped over to the basin and washed his hands. Seating himself on the edge of the chair, he opened a drawer and removed a small bottle of white powder, a second bottle of sterile water, a tiny piece of cotton, an alcohol swab, a tourniquet, a wrapped syringe and a spoon. Hands shaking, he lit the nearby candle. He deemed it a bitter irony that his pain medication derived its name from the German word heroisch meaning 'heroic'.

From his perspective, there was nothing heroic about dying from cancer or shooting up with heroin.

However, he'd long since got over the shame of the latter. For him, it was a matter of simple expedience; heroin crossed the bloodbrain barrier faster than morphine and was a far more potent a.n.a.lgesic.

Removing the needle from his vein, Ivo leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, able to see a luminous fire burning in the dark void. An instant later, Wotan appeared, hanging from a gnarled oak tree.

Pain dissipating, Ivo softly cackled.

The fallacy of religion was that the Church Fathers adamantly a.s.serted transcendental experiences proved the existence of G.o.d. How trite. One had only to inject a small amount of heroin into a vein to induce a spiritual euphoria.

Ivo savoured the bliss as the bright ball of fire travelled to his left breast, burning a hole through the middle of his tattoo.

Yes!

They would find the Lapis Exillis. He was certain of it. Then they would put his father's theory to the ultimate test. Transform the past into the present. And when they did, they would restore das Dritte Reich ... the Third Reign ... one that would indeed last a thousand years.

How amazing to ponder that the course of all their lives could be dramatically altered by fusing different types of energy. Creating an invisible force that had no intelligence, no scent, no taste and made no sound.

Yet, despite all that, a force to be reckoned with.

46.

What was the Grail if not the Mysterium cosmographic.u.m? Caedmon silently mused.

Excited by the prospect of finding the 'secret of the universe', he had nonetheless taken the time to shave, shower and don fresh clothing. Keys in hand, he swung the leather tote bag on to his shoulder. For some inexplicable reason, he felt like a new man.

Ready to depart, he shut the bedroom door and headed into the flat's cluttered sitting room. Opening the top drawer on the corner cabinet, he reluctantly deposited his holster. As he did, his gaze landed on a smudged gla.s.s with a finger's measure of gin, in plain sight where he'd left it earlier that morning on top of the cabinet.

For several long seconds he stared, his old self tempted.

' "And every spirit upon earth seemed fervourless as I," ' he muttered, well aware that he'd become a predictable bore.

Tuning out the Siren, he purposefully hitched the satchel a bit higher on his shoulder and strode out of the room.

A few moments later, alarm set and shop door locked, he departed L'Equinoxe bookstore. The gaily painted shop sign swayed ever so slightly in the breeze, rusty hinges jangling. He'd designed the signage, which depicted the Fool, the first card in the Tarot deck, as a satirical self-portrait. The innocent young man blithely setting forth on an adventure. So consumed in his joie de vivre, it rendered him oblivious to the fact that he was about to step off a cliff and break his b.l.o.o.d.y neck.

Although, strangely enough, today the image bespoke a deeper meaning. In truth, he felt uplifted. Invigorated, even. Certainly a departure from the self-loathing he'd experienced upon rising. For what began as a day like any other had unexpectedly turned into an odyssey. A mental challenge had presented itself, wrapped in the tantalizing ribbons of a centuries-old mystery.

However, unlike the Fool, he wasn't naive. The Seven Research Foundation sought the Grail so they could put a dark plan into play. The progeny of monsters, G.o.d only knew what they intended. The Cathars would claim, and rightly so, that the Seven owed allegiance to none save Rex Mundi, Lucifer, the G.o.d of the material realm. The evil one who lured young fools from the straight and narrow path.

As he hurriedly made his way down Rue de la Bucherie feeling very much like a newly released penitentiary inmate it dawned on Caedmon that all of the c.o.c.k-ups in his life had transpired after he'd veered from the straight and narrow. His father, were he still alive, would maintain that he'd taken his first misstep when he'd journeyed down the birth ca.n.a.l. Indeed, he held Caedmon personally liable for the fact that Helena Aisquith died while she laboured to bring their first child, a squalling baby boy, into the world.

Because of that tragic misfortune, he'd been raised in a cheerless household. When he turned thirteen, his father shunted him off to Eton College. A malicious contrivance, Caedmon was forced to bear a whole new torment, pecking order at the hallowed public school determined by one's lineage. Lacking the ancestral prestige of his cla.s.smates, he had to best them with the only tools in his a.r.s.enal: a sharp mind and a well-honed body. By the time he left Eton, he boasted members.h.i.+p in the elite Sixth Form Select and had captained the cricket team that victoriously took the field against Harrow. For five arduous years he had stayed true to the straight path until, finally liberated, he set forth for Oxford.

In no time at all, he veered on to a crooked lane.

For the first two years he ran with a fast crowd who fancied themselves latter-day libertines, 'Mad, bad and dangerous to know.' When the late-night revels became old hat, his scholastic pa.s.sions revived. However, craving academic excitement, he did the unthinkable and changed from Egyptology to medieval history, the Knights Templar far more thrilling than mummified pharaohs. Earning a reputation as a rogue scholar, the impulsive move eventually resulted in his ousting from Queen's College. 'The Manifesto', as he jokingly referred to his dissertation, was summarily dismissed as a 'harebrained hypothesis that could only have been opium-induced'. When, a few months later, MI5 came knocking at his door, it seemed a blessing in disguise.

Little did I know ...

But the overlords at Thames House had not deadened his spirit. Nor had the dons at Queen's College blunted his academic pa.s.sion. The fact that he was setting off for Montsegur proved that he was still curious. Still intrigued by those questions that had no answers.

In a hurry to get to the Metro, Caedmon sidestepped a group of tourists who, maps and cameras in hand, huddled on the pavement. He glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch. The high-speed TGV train for Ma.r.s.eille was scheduled to depart Gare de Lyon in forty-five minutes. Giving him just enough time to arrive at the train station and purchase a ticket. According to the schedule, they would arrive in Ma.r.s.eille by mid-evening. He intended to use the three-hour train ride to devise a plan of action. Wi-Fi Internet access would enable him to begin his preliminary research.

He knew that the trip might prove a fool's errand. Many men had sought the Grail. Many had met their death in the ill-fated quest. Be that as it may, he felt compelled to join the hunt.

Making his way across the Square Rene Viviani, the small park adjacent to St Julien-le-Pauvre Church, Caedmon sensed an unseen presence following in his wake. The nape of his neck p.r.i.c.kled as he ducked into a church doorway.

Hidden in a dark alcove, cheek pressed to the fluted limestone, he surrept.i.tiously peered around the corner. This time of day the tree-lined park brimmed with harried mothers chasing tots and pus.h.i.+ng prams. From where he stood, he had an un.o.bstructed view across the Seine to the much larger, and more magnificent, Notre-Dame.

Eyes narrowed, Caedmon searched for the telltale person who did not belong. The anomaly in the endless stream.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

As a precaution, he waited a few seconds more. Because all train pa.s.sengers had to pa.s.s through a metal detector, he'd been forced to leave his Ruger pistol back at the flat.

He released a pent-up breath. 'I'm seeing fiends where none exist.'

Stepping away from the portal, he continued on his way. He quickened his pace as he glanced at the western horizon and noticed a strange chartreuse cast to the sky.

A warning that a violent storm was brewing.

PART III.

'The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes' Marcel Proust.

47.

Montsegur Castle, The Languedoc.

0914 hours.

Could anything be more ridiculous than a middle-aged man on a Grail quest?

'Only the Fool about to blithely step off a steep cliff,' Caedmon muttered under his breath.

To prevent a fatal mishap, he braced both hands on the ruined battlement as he set his gaze on the Pyrenees. Perched atop a limestone and granite outcrop that rose an impressive three thousand feet into the air, Montsegur commanded a panoramic view that left one awestruck. Ragged peaks. Colossal mountains. Sheer precipices. Set against a cerulean blue sky, the ancient mountains seemed impregnable.

Although appearances could be deceiving as the doomed Cathars discovered when their 'impregnable' citadel was besieged by the Pope's army.

According to legend, just before the fortress capitulated, on a frigid and moonless night, four brave Cathars scaled Montsegur's western cliff. Managing to sneak past the enemy line, they travelled under cover of night to the Templar preceptory located twelve kilometres away. To persuade the warrior monks to fight on their behalf, the four Cathars bore a gold medallion with an encrypted map that revealed the secret location of the greatest treasure of the Middle Ages, the Holy Grail. Having presented the medallion to the Knights Templar, the Cathar emissaries promised that the encryption key would be turned over as soon as the Templars took up arms. The prize too tempting to resist, the Templars saddled their war horses and set off for Montsegur.

By the time they arrived, the citadel had already fallen, the last two hundred and fifty Cathars forcibly marched through the barbican gates. They were put to the torch by order of the Pope's envoy, a white-robed Dominican priest, thus bringing to a fiery close the thirty-year-long Albigensian Crusade.

As had happened on all of his previous visits to Montsegur, Caedmon found himself contemplating the tragedy with renewed vigour. Everywhere he looked the ghost of those humble heretics hovered amidst the ruined ramparts and shattered curtain walls, all that remained of the Cathars' mountaintop eyrie. A limestone monument to the dead, it invoked the memory of that other doomed mountaintop fortress, the Jewish bastion at Masada. Which no doubt explained the heart-rending aura that clung to the citadel like a finely spun burial shroud.

Opening the flap on his field jacket, Caedmon removed his BlackBerry. Because of the precipitous hike up the winding mountain trail from the village below, he'd dressed in khaki cargo pants, a practical long-sleeved s.h.i.+rt and rugged boots. Accessing the photo log on the BlackBerry, he stared at the symbols incised on the medallion: star, sun, moon and four strangely-shaped 'A's arranged in a cruciform.

His gaze zeroed in on the four 'A's.

Yesterday, on the train ride from Paris, he'd carefully examined a map of the Languedoc. With numerous place names in the region beginning with the letter 'A', it would take a lifetime to search each and every one. Moreover, the Languedoc encompa.s.sed an area that measured nearly sixteen thousand square miles. Most of it, mountainous terrain. The disheartening reality was that the Grail could have been hidden anywhere within those sixteen thousand square miles.

He skipped to the next photograph, a close-up of the engraved text on the medallion's flipside. The first two lines, written in the Occitan language, read: 'In the glare of the twelfth hour, the moon s.h.i.+nes true.' A curious turn of phrase since the moon was most often a.s.sociated with the night sky. The last line of text had been scribed in Latin. Reddis lapis exillis cellis. 'The Stone of Exile has been returned to the niche.' While the meaning was obvious, it was also frustratingly vague, no mention made of where 'the niche' was located.

The mystery compounding, Caedmon took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the pine-scented air as he stared at the craggy mountains in the near distance. Terra incognita.

Worried that he'd journeyed to Montsegur in vain, he gazed at the barren courtyard beneath the ramparts. Two blokes who'd hauled surveying equipment to the citadel were toying with a transit-level. Another pair, who were filming a doc.u.mentary, had just set a very professional-looking video camera on to a tripod. A tour group on the far-side of the courtyard was taking turns reading aloud from Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival.

Caedmon suspected that, like him, they were all attempting to solve the mystery of the Cathars' mountaintop Mountain!

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,' he whispered, hit with a sudden burst of inspiration.

Sliding his rucksack off his shoulder, he hurriedly loosened the drawstrings, retrieving a small leather-bound journal and a sharpened pencil. His hand visibly shaking, he opened the journal to the first blank page and drew one of the 'A's from the medallion cruciform.

His breath caught in his throat.

It's not an 'A' ... it's a mountain peak!

Taken aback by the revelation, Caedmon hitched his hip on to the battlement as he examined the digital photos on the BlackBerry with fresh eyes. If he was right, it meant that, rather than four 'A's, there were four mountain peaks depicted on the medallion. A pictogram of the landscape visible from Montsegur. Hope renewed, he stared intently at the other engraved symbols.

Certain that the star and the sun represented the heliacal rising of Sirius, that left the moon in the top quadrant to decipher. An age-old symbol found in almost every culture, its meaning and significance was myriad. Birth. Death. Resurrection. Cyclical time. Spiritual light in the dead of night.

But how did any of that relate to the four mountain peaks?

' "In the glare of the twelfth hour, the moon s.h.i.+nes true," ' he quietly recited, the moon not only depicted on the medallion, but specifically mentioned on the reverse inscription.

Could the 'moon' be the key to unlocking the riddle of the Montsegur Medallion?

Again, he was struck by the strange reference to time. Noon, the twelfth hour of the day, was the apogee of light, when the sun, not the moon, shone at its brightest. Traditionally, 'noon' also correlated to the cardinal direction of 'south'. To this day, the French word 'midi' meant 'noon' and 'southern'. As in the Midi-Pyrenees, or southern Pyrenees, where Montsegur was located.

What if the 'moon' referred to a specific mountain located south of Montsegur?

Anxious to test the hypothesis, Caedmon quickly checked the online map feature on his BlackBerry.

'd.a.m.n,' he muttered a few moments later, not getting a single hit.

On a twenty-first-century map.

Undaunted, he next pulled up an Oxford University search engine for the map collection at the Bodleian Library. Just as he'd hoped, the Bod had a thirteenth-century map of the Languedoc archived online. Heart beating at a brisk tattoo, he clicked on it.